


True End

by turtlesinspace



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
Genre: Gen, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-28
Updated: 2015-06-28
Packaged: 2018-04-06 13:25:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4223382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turtlesinspace/pseuds/turtlesinspace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are some futures not even Pluto can change. Post-Stars one-shot. Mixed manga/anime continuities.</p>
            </blockquote>





	True End

Setsuna dreamed of dark blue. Flashes of light creating people-shaped silhouettes against concrete walls. Hands without bodies, mouths filled with sharp teeth, clung to her body like leeches, sucking energy from her. And then the sky turned black, and she could see no stars, could not see the moon, just a crystal reflecting no light, and a sweet voice, “sleep now,” the princess.

She then saw the familiar gray nothingness rushing up at her, the gate of time taking shape, and she opened the door and looked inside...

Setsuna woke up sweating. The pillows and the duvet were on a heap on the floor. It was cold; Christmas would be here soon. There were presents for Haruka and Michiru and Hotaru and Usagi and all of the others underneath the bed, not yet wrapped. A recipe for Christmas cake taped to the fridge. They were going to a party tomorrow at Usagi and Mamoru’s house. Setsuna looked out the window, and saw a sky was full of clouds that blocked what should be a three quarter waning moon.

Her dreams were never dreams so much as reminders that these days were finite, and soon Setsuna would die and Pluto would return to the Gate, almost for good. The longer she was away from the gate, the cloudier her sight had become, until it was impossible for her to know precisely how this timeline would turn out. It was like playing one of those visual novels Hotaru loved so much, without consulting a walkthrough—so many different paths, so many ways to die. She had played this game before so many times, and had seen so many bad ends.

**

Once, and only once, Michiru asked her, did you know that we would fall to Galaxia? That we were all doomed to die? Setsuna said only, “I believed in you, and I believed in the Princess.” It was not entirely a lie. 

In all of the other timelines, the Cold Sleep would have struck by now, the result of Serenity using the ginzuishou in a last-ditch effort to save the planet from the Death Busters—and the keepers of all of the Star Seeds were hibernating when Galaxia was on her rampage. She had passed by a planet that seemed already dead, ravaged the rest of the Milky Way, and imploded from the weight of Chaos before Neo-Queen Serenity woke up. Millennia later, the few remaining descendants of Earth, desperate for a new home, would visit countless empty worlds of crumbling pillars and bones barely below the surface. 

But Pluto had been manipulating the time stream. Yes, the taboo meant death, but she could die infinite times and still have a living soul at the time gate, ready to try and try again. Her latest project was a long and difficult one, and involved so many unspoken truths. Convincing Neo-queen Serenity that Small Lady could only truly make friends in the past. Waking up Neptune when she was just 13, and leaving her to fight on her own for years, to grow stronger. All of the times she used carefully chosen words and silences to keep Haruka and Michiru from acting on Hotaru until it was too late to kill her. A time stop and “suicide” to get them to Mugen Academy, so that Sailor Moon could borrow their power and they would be too weak to resist her. Staying away from Earth for months of their time afterwards, to let them all believe that time manipulation had consequences. 

And it had worked so much better than she could have ever imagined. The Cold Sleep was delayed, and there were three more soldiers who were now really, truly alive. For the first time in millennia, Pluto had her sisters back, and a chance to give Saturn a life outside of her duty. She had given her precious Small Lady a girl who would grow up to be her greatest friend, her greatest champion. 

She had also given Galaxia a beacon of eleven brightly shining star seeds, and this was a problem. 

The first time Galaxia struck, Pluto had taken Uranus and Neptune and Saturn to their castles in the outer rim of the solar system, in an attempt to keep them safe. Instead, they were all killed, and before she could respawn she and all of the others were raised as revenants and fought Sailor Moon and were killed again. For that mistake, Sailor Moon had to travel all the way to the Galaxy Cauldron to make things right. She killed Galaxia there; no star seeds were returned to their owners, because there was no one to guide them home. The senshi came back, and Earth was spared, but no one else in the universe survived.

The second time, when Uranus and Neptune took the bracelets and became Animamates, Pluto killed Uranus before Uranus could kill her. It wasn’t hard to do when they weren’t used to their newfound power and Pluto had surprise on her side. She didn’t have the Time Key, but she had her hands. Neptune was screaming something she couldn’t quite understand, until Uranus went limp, and Pluto realized that they hadn’t actually lost their souls. They all died quickly after that. The last thing she saw was Saturn weeping on the floor. Later, when the Light of Hope asked Sailor Moon to fight Galaxia and seal up the Chaos within herself, Sailor Moon listened, and became corrupted, and the galaxy’s light went out.

The only solution that worked was to do nothing at all. If Uranus and Neptune could keep their souls, that Galaxia would come to doubt her own abilities to control the Animamates and that she would not resuscitate them to fight Sailor Moon. They could end the battle that night, on Earth, away from the cauldron, and Sailor Moon would never be forced to kill her friends, nor lose her goodness and her selflessness. She could keep the final battle small and safe and save the whole universe from losing its shine, and she could give them all ten years to be ordinary women living in sunshine. 

**  
That nearly ten years ago in this time. She had put off the Cold Sleep, but in all of the futures and all of the timelines (Setsuna counted 432,156 that she had seen regarding this), she couldn’t stop it from coming, and she couldn’t stop the sacrifice of billions that needed to die before Crystal Tokyo could rise. Ultimately, not even she could stop Chaos, really. Not until Sailor Cosmos comes to the time gate millions of years from now and asks Pluto, how should I destroy this universe? The best she could have done was that when Saturn finally came for the last time, that the eyes holding the scythe would be eyes that she knew…

She looks over and sees Hotaru standing in the doorway, in her pajamas. How long has she been standing there?

“Bad dream?” Setsuna asks, and Hotaru nods and comes over to the bed and climbs into it. She used to come here often when she was small, before she knew that she was Sailor Saturn; Hotaru was in the midst of puberty, and nearly as tall as Setsuna now, but it felt just the same as it did back then. 

Hotaru hugged her. “It’s coming soon, isn’t it?”

Setsuna sighed, and hugged her back. “Soon, yes. I don’t know how soon.”

“And there’s nothing we can do to stop it?”

“We can prepare. But no, we can’t stop it from happening” Setsuna dislodged from her long enough to grab the comforter and drag it back up over the bed, covered up the two of them.

“I…I mean, I know that it’s our fate. And I really, really miss Chibi-Usa-chan. I want to see her again so badly. But…I love my life and I love my friends and I’m really happy, and I just want to grow up and be normal for a little while longer.”

“But everyone has to change, someday. Especially us.”

“What will happen to us?” Hotaru asks.

“I don’t know.” Setsuna says. Perhaps she truly doesn’t.

The door creaked again. Michiru stood there in her nightshirt, Haruka in her t-shirt and boxers, the two of them looking so very young.

“The sea is sick.” Michiru says. “The wind whispers illness. The ground is hurting, and the world is…infected.” She blinks. “That’s what it is. The world is sick and we need to let the fever break.”

“If we don’t all die first.” Haruka says.

“A lot of people will die” Hotaru says, hugging herself a little closer to Setsuna.

“How long do we have?” Haruka asks.

“I don’t know” says Setsuna. “A year, maybe two. It could change. But it’s not going to be tomorrow.”

The two of them walked over, and pulled up the cover, and climbed into the bed too. They all somehow fit, the comforter around them, bodies warming each other through all of the satin and cotton. All the different smells—Michiru’s scent was clean, like cotton; Haruka had on a man’s cologne, and Hotaru smelled like cookies from a drugstore body spray. It all clashed but it was familiar and comforting, just as it was to feel all the limbs going around each other, a four way hug.

“No matter what happens, we are always together,” Haruka says.

“Even if we sacrifice ourselves, we will always be who we are,” Michiru says.

“You have always been my sisters, and you always will be,” Setsuna whispers.

“Thank you,” says Hotaru, last, quietly. They don’t say anything more. Hotaru falls asleep, eventually, on her back. Haruka’s already unconscious, curled up against Michiru, holding her nightshirt. Michiru’s free hand reaches out over both of their bodies, takes Setsuna’s. They look at each other for a long time, before Michiru falls asleep, too.

Setsuna pays attention to her breathing, keeps it steady and smooth. She relaxes the muscles in her face, her body. She notices all of the sounds and sights and touch and smells around her in this world. This beautiful, dark, brilliant world, short-lived world and all the sisters she has saved.


End file.
